Friday, February 08, 2008



Ella (a.k.a. Ellie) in a candid cat moment.

Jason and I came home from work (work! work! Who invented work anyway?) earlier tonight to find the electricity down. A fitting end to a week of modern mis-wonders. On Tuesday night (late, because these sorts of things only happen late at night) while walking Piper, Jason and I smelled gas outside the house. There was a large leak in the main gas line, so we had no hot water, heat or stove for a day and a half. I know it could have been much worse. A gas leak is serious.
And our electricity is on now ... we went out for Mexican food (shrimp, mushroom and spinach quesadillas!) and the power was back on when we came back. So I should stop complaining.
Oh, but complaining is what I do best. Especially about work. Especially when we are understaffed and underpaid at work, and the constant drudgery makes me feel like knocking my head against my ever-increasingly dusty desk. And wow -- I am such a "reliable" little worker bee. Good for me.
Most of us will waste our life away working, trapped in gray cubicles (and that only if we're lucky), daydreaming about what we'd rather be doing 40-60 hours a week. Then we come home and crash on the couch, too tired and miserable to do anything but watch TV. Or, if you're me, watch Netflixed movies and knit way too many hats/scarves/bags/ponchos.
And then, if we're lucky enough to retire with a pension of any kind, most of us will spend most of the rest of our lives feeling aimless and incomplete, missing the quiet routine of 8-5. Watching television, buying lottery tickets, maybe a crossword puzzle or two.
A co-worker was "let go" earlier this week. She called me this morning -- she's delighted to be severed from her life as an administrative assistant, to have her severance pay and unemployment, to finally be able to go back to school to finish her degree, to move away from this city of endless yellow bridges, to go forward in life.
I am delighted for her. And I am so very jealous.